Karin had given him a key to her pied-à-terre. But how often, by now, had he stayed there alone?

While the aircraft made its gradual descent, he relived a conversation he had had with Christina a year ago.

‘I’d like Ben to stay the night with me, if you don’t mind.’

‘I do mind. Where would he stay with you but in your girlfriend’s apartment? Where Ben he has told me he sometimes eats lunch when he is with you. I do not think it suitable he should see his father in bed with a woman to whom he is not married.’

‘Then I’ll take a room for him and me at the Bayerischer Hof.’

‘I could not ask you to make such a sacrifice. The answer to your request is still no.’

How and when did Christina become so smug and sanctimonious? Howard thought. Well, she’s the one who’s got Ben, isn’t she? And is now married to a man from her own strait-laced background – if you don’t count the beer swilling. But she was as mad for me as I was for her when we met at that ski resort. Would marriage have been the outcome, though, if I hadn’t got her pregnant?

With the benefit of hindsight, Howard doubted it.

He was shocked when he discovered he had deflowered a virgin, a rare species at the après-ski parties that featured in the winter sports scene. Howard remembered Christina tearing herself from his arms at the crack of dawn, to be back in her bed before her room-mates awakened. Also his having a comical vision of one of them doing what she was and their bumping into each other on their way back to the room. In retrospect, though, it struck him as part of the hypocrisy imposed by some parents upon their children.

Ben’s being born in Manchester had enabled Christina to fool hers that he had arrived prematurely. And Howard had let his family think whatever it suited them to think – which probably varied from person to person.

One thing was sure, though. Respectability had once more enveloped Christina! Which wasn’t to say there hadn’t been an element of sourness detectable in her references to his sleeping with another woman. Does that perhaps denote that the hefty guy who replaced me doesn’t come up to the standards I set for her in bed? he conjectured as the plane touched down.

If so, it might teach Christina that she can’t have everything – and who’s being sour now!

Karin was waiting in the arrivals hall and blew a kiss when she saw him.

The one they shared when Howard reached her, for which it was necessary for her to stand on tiptoe, implied how much they had missed each other.